Weaving words and telling tales.

Monthly Archives: January 2014

(That title is sung to the tune of the Barenaked Ladies song “One Week,” by the by.)

I wake up this morning mumbling to myself that it’s too damn early to be waking up. Of course, this is my own fault for being up at four in the damn AM, slinging ink, vaping a stimulant, and forgetting about taking the meds. I roll out of bed thinking that a glass of juice would be the perfect thing to get the taste of dry cotton out of my mouth, and also thinking to myself If I hear that damn cucco clucking this morning it’d better be that someone broke their leg in six places and their arm in three and I’m the only one working for the next two weeks.

Sure enough, I hear that familiar “BAWWWWWK-BAWKBUKBUKBUK” while my head’s in the fridge.

“No no no no NO, dammit,” I say, dropping ice in the general direction of my glass. Two cubes make it, one lands in my fuzzy slipper as I slap the lock off of my phone. It’s the call-off message.

This makes a solid week that I haven’t worked. I spend one week snowed into work, and then nothing.

With nothing else to do, I get up and get ready to run errands.

The first trip is to the grocery store. The pharmacy’s in there too. When I get there, there’s two problems:

since it took me so long to raise money to get the prescriptions filled, it’s going to have to be done again, and could I wait twenty minutes please, and

there’s a couple problems with a couple medications, namely that a few aren’t quite covered and one of them is being flat out refused, despite that I need it to combat the extreme TWITCH one of the others has given me.

Fast forward about half an hour, and I’ve plopped $27.71 on medicine.

Food stamps don’t cover everything—if you’re not buying shelf-stable things and going fresh you have to buy things on the fly every once in a while. Today was one of those runs. That ran me $16.09—but luckily it’s for an ingredient that lasts for a month or so.

So today I’m under $43.80.

Luckily, my pops came through with a favor, and spotted me $86. That puts me on the POSITIVE side at $42.20…or, basically where I started when I woke up this morning, if you count the dollar I found in a shoe when I got home.

There’s a minor problem with my insurance that I’m going to have to look into. On top of that, Paypal is being moderately slow about getting the transfers done. We’re hoping that at least SOME of it’s done by payday—even if it isn’t, I’ll SQUEAK past on Thursday for the rent. (Lights can slide by until February…it wouldn’t be the first time.)

…of course, then there’s one more problem that I forgot about. I’ve got a surgery to worry about. I forgot about the birth control in my arm. It’s due to come out. This is covered, but…my arm will be useless for work when that surgery happens! Now, I’ll put this to a ‘cross the bridge when I come to it,’ but…I. DON’T. LIKE. SURGERY. Granted, I like the clusterfuck that is my untreated hormone levels even less (I WAS disabled without it pretty much), but still. Knives that I don’t get to look at and go “ooh pretty” at, eeew.

…on the upside, my folks will finally shut up and stop trying to micromanage my ovaries when they find out the rod’s coming out next month. >.>;

I wouldn’t do this if I weren’t desperate. I am a week and a half from losing my tiny project apartment. I simply haven’t had the hours to make the rent—and that means other bills are about to go delinquent as well.

I haven’t gotten my prescriptions refilled in a month thanks to the shortage. The lights are only on because it’s illegal to cut them off in the winter.

I need at least $200 to stay in my apartment each month. The lights are about $200 behind by now. A month’s bus pass, my only way to and from work, is $70. The prescriptions run between $40 and $90, depending on the complications that come up. And I rarely make this sum in a month. This slump usually lasts til April.

PayPal donations look like the only way I’m going to survive and stay off the streets in 2014. If you can help, send some help via PayPal to redsummoner(at)hotmail(dot)com.

If you have friends who can help, I would appreciate it. I don’t have a second option.